


Odds and Lines

by aperture_living



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 16:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aperture_living/pseuds/aperture_living
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zack<i> always</i> took the bets that Kunsel threw down on the table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odds and Lines

Zack _always_ took the bets that Kunsel threw down on the table. Eating live bugs? Not a problem. Drinking an entire bottle of hotsauce without milk? All in honest day’s work. Sneaking in and stealing Lazard’s cravat? Sure, it had earned him some demerit duty (including a month down cleaning the bathrooms, a frightening task when you consider it was a bathroom belonging solely to male teenage soldiers), but backing down from a challenge was unheard of. Not on SOLDIER time, on SOLDIER pay, on SOLDIER ethics. 

And this left his helmeted best friend positively obsessed with finding the one thing that Zack wouldn’t do. He wanted to find his limit. He wanted to know when enough was enough, to be able to know the moment common sense would step in the way of youthful, impulsive bravado. After all, everyone had to contain some sort of limit, some sort of self-preservation, right?

So when Kunsel asked him to make it to the roof of the Shinra building without using elevators or stairs on the last ten floors, he had been kidding. No one would take a bet like that. No one would be so foolish. 

But Zack only smiled and calmly told Kunsel to wait up on the roof at the office staff’s quittin’ time. Immediately, Kunsel regretted this plan, already wanted to pull back and say, _Just kidding! Come on, let’s get a drink! I can’t believe you’d really do something so **stupid**!_ But by then, fate was sealed, it was too little too late, and Zack was walking away with a grin etched down deep into his lips. Those types of grins were dangerous, were promises of paths that he wouldn’t be swayed from, and Kunsel felt his shoulders sag under their guards. 

_He’s going to go swinging off the side of the building with a damn bedsheet. He’s just crazy enough to do it, and it’ll be my fault when his face meets the pavement. Kunsel, man, you really did it now._

So Kunsel waited as per the rules, the wind cold, the lights at the top of the roof a slow flare of red, then darkness, red, then darkness, a heartbeat for the dying. His boots could have made sounds if the height didn’t make it so damn windy, and the silence of his own pacing, racing steps was unnerving. Everything was unnerving. He could imagine the email, sailing out to all the cadets with perfect clarity, a _We Regret to Inform You_ sort with a p.s. of _Reminder: no climbing on the outside of the Shinra building. Mako does not allow you fly._

A half hour went by, then an hour, and when there was still nothing, Kunsel swallowed the lump in his throat and peered over the edge of the building, the up-gust of cold air nearly a wall as he leaned. No ambulances, no frantic crowds, no white blankets tied together as a lone madman scaled the side, just the shadow of red over him every other few seconds. That didn’t matter; there were other angels of the building, and one safe side didn’t mean--

“Hey.”

Kunsel snapped up and turned out, his eyes impossibly wide behind his visor. Zack stood there, calm and cool, like he did this every day, but his hair was covered in cobwebs and his pristine uniform was wrought with dust. He looked like he crawled around under a bachelor’s bed for a year, and then did part-time work as a janitor’s broom.

“Zack, you--how did you--?”

Broad shoulders rolled in an easy shrug, while one hand reached out to knock lightly on Kunsel’s helmet. “Drop ceilings. Crawl spaces. Ventilation shafts. I would have been here sooner, but I had to backtrack because one of them was sealed off.” The wind caught his laugh straight from his lips, carrying it down and away, lost. “What, did you think I was going to attach plungers to my feet and try to walk up that way?”

“Something like that,” Kunsel muttered, looking away, lips twisted tight. Shit, next time he was going to have to think of something not so death-defying, something that there would be impossible for Zack would take. Something that could keep him from breaking his neck, but wasn’t in the realm of do-able. Something that wouldn’t make Kunsel afraid, wouldn’t make him dread as he thought about it, something that would make his heart race like an attack was imminent, something-

“Sooo, what’s next on the agenda?” Zack asked, rolling back and forth on his heels, arms behind his head. A dust bunny fell from his waist and went rolling across the cold cinderblocks. “I mean, it’d better be big to top this, right?”

And Kunsel’s lips were moving before he could stop them, a challenge, the perfect thing. “How about a kis--”

“What are you two doing up there?” 

In unison, Zack and Kunsel turned towards the cold, accusatory tone, spying the door that Tseng had silently (as most Turks did) walked through. The ends of his black jacket fluttered open and close, like a window that couldn’t make up its mind, and a few dark hairs escaped from their strict imprisoning tie. Dark eyes narrowed, waiting for an answer, watching as Zack looked off to the side in order to buy some time for petty excuses and Kunsel opened his mouth to talk his way out of it. 

“I could see you both on the security cameras,” Tseng went on, nodding towards the door, a silent order for them to follow. _Now_. “Zack, I’m not even going to entertain a rational explanation on what you did with the ceiling tiles in the call center cubicles.”

“I was--”

“No. Don’t.” And when they both disappeared through, Tseng followed after, letting the door close behind them. “Just clean up your mess and go back to the barracks. I don't want to see you again today.” 

Now left alone and with the SOLDIERs’ gloves receiving a healthy coating of dust and plaster as they fixed the mess one rambunctious man made, Zack looked over at Kunsel with a critical eye. He let the silence hang in the air for one uncomfortable moment before asking, “What was that next bet going to be, anyway?”

Kunsel glanced across from him and had the sudden realization that Zack would always win their bets because he had no fear, none. It was really amazing, really awe-inspiring, something to aspire and reach to, a height he could see but couldn't reach. Yet. He couldn’t say the same; he still had a few he couldn’t shake this early in the game, some that he wasn’t ready to face, not yet, and it was both frustrating and invigorating. Hm, funny that. So beneath the helmet he half smiled, half laughed, and placed the final ceiling tile back in place. “I forgot,” he lied. 

Mako blue eyes looked him up and down, not believing, but politely not calling him out on it. For a second, Kunsel was certain that Zack knew, he had heard on the roof what the wind hadn’t stolen, he had pieced it together, but the taller man just smiled, jumped off the desk he was standing on, and waved. 

“If you remember, let me know.”

Kunsel watched him walk out of the offices, and when he was alone, he grinned. “I will.”


End file.
